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Thursday, February 27, 2014

List

Today has been a tired kind of day because last night was a rough night, Atticus-wise. I made it through the morning, but when I really started dragging about an hour ago, I decided a cup of coffee should do the trick. Plugged the coffee maker in, paced for a minute, did some high-knees running around the house (to wake myself up and because I can), then wondered why I hadn't heard any coffee gurgling its way into the pot yet. As it turns out, you need to add water, a coffee filter, and coffee grounds to the coffee maker, not to mention turning it on, before it will perform its magic. It took a full ten seconds of me staring stupidly at the empty coffee pot before I figured this out.

I've been meaning to write a "Books" post for a couple months now, but every time I've sat down to write one, I've thought Oh, but wait, I wanted to tell everyone about This book and That book and they're next on my reading list. I'll wait just another week, then write the post so I can include them. I have done this at least five times now. It is finally occurring to me that there will always be another book I want everyone to know about and read rightthissecond, as my To Read list is never-ending. I'm going to try and start the "Books" post tomorrow, but looking back over my Goodreads account and trying to pick which ones to review is a teensy bit excruciating; as such, I may end up doing a few book posts in a row. Or I may get busy and forget about the whole thing until July. Isn't this blog fun?

Caedmon and I went to our local library yesterday morning. At one point the lovely lady that leads story time said, "Wait... wait a minute. Caedmon, are your pants on backward?" Caedmon blithely replied, "Oh, yeah." She looked at me, and I was forced to admit that yes, I knew his pants were on backward. I just didn't care. Not Caring is something I've become excellent at doing, particularly when it comes to backwards pants, backwards underwear (this looks so, so painful but Caedmon continually insists on wearing them that way), backwards shirts, wearing his sister's socks, etc, etc. I'm so proficient at Not Caring I could put it on my resume, although for what job I have no idea. Thankfully this library lady knows us well and is regularly confronted with the eccentricities unique to mothers of young children. She laughed, and that was all. I suppose it didn't seem all that strange, given that it was from the same child who, depending on the day, insists on being called Batman, Superman, the Head, and, rarely, Caedmon. The library staff are always very good sports about it and ask as soon as he walks in what his name is that day. Rolling with the name changes is one of many things they are very, very good at (although "the Head" threw us all a bit. I still don't really know what that's supposed to mean).

Caedmon doesn't use the contraction "won't," instead, he uses "willn't," which I realize isn't a real word, but if you give it (too much) thought, you'll realize "willn't" as a contraction makes more sense for "will not" than "won't" does, anyway. I may just start using it myself. It would be a fun social experiment to see how many people I could convince that "willn't" is actually the proper contraction for "will not." Kind of like the time Derek told a coworker at ESPN that the correct pronunciation of "Wichita" was "Wih-Ih-Ah." The guy believed Derek, and went on to pronounce it that way. Hilarity ensued. For Derek, anyway.

2 comments:

Frindle--you must read this delightful children's book. Actually, I think you should read it aloud to Adelaide--I bet she would like it! (In the spirit of the social experiment on changing the contraction for will not).

So that's "Wichita" pronounced as if one has no tongue? Did the guy say that to the public?

Pants & underwear backwards, eh? I applaud you for not caring. But it does sound extremely uncomfortable.

Frindle is indeed a great and fun book. It may create extra work for you, deciphering even more new words that your kids insist on using. And English is stupid - Willn't ought to be a word. So should integritous.

The BFG by Raold Dahl is another great book with lots of galumptious made-up words that ought to exist.